The Most Expensive Places To Live

Each year, Mercer Consulting assembles its ranking of the most expensive places to live. Mercer compiles information from 214 cities worldwide, comparing the cost of more than 200 items in each location including housing, transportation, food, entertainment and more. Mercer's study is designed to help multinational corporations determine compensation allowance for expatriate employees, using New York as the base city.

This year’s rankings saw an influx of African cities, "reflecting the growing economic importance of the region to global companies across all business sectors" according to Nathalie Constantin-Metral, Senior Researcher at Mercer. However, to entice foreign workers to these regions, companies must provide a similar standard of living compared with what employees experience at home, a cost which can get "extraordinarily high, particularly the cost of good, secure accomodation," Constantin-Metral says.

In the Americas, the most expensive city is Sao Paulo (21) while New York (27) and Los Angeles (55) are the most expensive cities in the United States and Vancouver (75) too the top spot in Canada.

So, which cities are the world’s most expensive to live in? Click ahead to find out!